Notes: A faito’o is a traditional Tongan herbalist. Te Kōti appears on a flag made by the late New Zealand poet and artist Leigh Davis.

REQUIRED READING

across the fly screen insects & I chase the breeze as the big day shrinks the cool is coming on

the book is sitting there, its blue cover clashing with the tea towel’s orange, stranded

they’ve had their heydays, the fading teatowel, the book of poems translated & re-translated

an aesthetics of the surface sliding towards evening, only one language spoken here

fructose to coma – undissolved granules spuming in a grubby glass on the table top

the poems say more than I want them to, no clarity really, can’t decide which way to read them

everything left as it is, the fridge compressor gurgles

PAM BROWN’s most recent book is Home by Dark (Shearsman, 2013). She writes poetry, reviews and makes collages. In 2013 she edited A New Compendium of Australian Poetry for the PennSound audio site. She is an editorial board member of VLAK Magazine and contributing editor to Fulcrum. Pam lives in the motley inner-urban district of Alexandria in Sydney, Australia. NB: "Collected melancholy" appeared earlier this year in the Australian magazine Overland.